Extra Credit

by Maggie Barbieri

  “So I have an idea who you are, but I’m not entirely sure,” I said to Briggs, wondering if he had given me some kind of truth serum. Suddenly, I just wanted to tell the truth. “I don’t know who this woman is exactly either,” I said, digging the heel into Mary Lou’s throat, “or what connection you have to her or to me or the Stepkowskis, but if you don’t throw that gun as far as you can, and you look pretty strong, so I’m guessing you can throw it pretty far, I will plunge the heel of this shoe into her throat.” This last part was almost a growl, and mostly true. “I don’t have the money. For the last time.”

  A voice, female and small, came from inside the preserve. “But I do.”

  Forty-Two

  “Hello, Sissy.” A small figure, but one that I recognized, came out of the woods, a miner’s hat strapped to her head, the light blinding me momentarily. “Alison, you can put the shoe down,” Christine said, standing at the other end of the slat bridge. “They’re not going to hurt you.” Next to her were three giant duffel bags, one stacked on top of the other, almost as tall as she was. “I hope big bills are acceptable,” she said. “It was easier to carry that way.”

  I took my arm from around Mary Lou’s neck but kept the shoe handy. I knew it wasn’t any protection against a gun, but seeing Christine had made me let down my guard. I hoped it wasn’t to my own detriment. Mary Lou staggered off, coughing and choking, still crying; the hold I had around her throat had been pretty tight, judging from the way she was rubbing at her neck.

  Briggs asked Christine if she had come alone.

  “Just like you asked,” she said. She pointed toward the parking lot. “Do you see any other cars there?”

  I hadn’t even seen hers, so I wouldn’t know if there were more than just the car we had arrived in.

  “No, really, Alison,” Christine said. “You can put your shoe back on.”

  “What the hell is going on?” I asked, donning my beautiful pump, the one that I was thankful I hadn’t had to plunge into Mary Lou’s neck. I would have ruined a perfectly good shoe and ended my day on a particularly sour note, and neither of those things appealed to me.

  “Why did you bring her?” Christine asked. “I thought we had a deal.”

  “Insurance policy,” Briggs said. “Just in case you had changed your mind.”

  Christine took a closer step, leaving the bags behind her. They looked like they weighed more than she did, and I wondered how she got them this deep into the woods. Even though we could still see the parking lot, it was a pretty long way to drag what looked like really heavy duffels. “Do you want to tell them or should I?” In her sneakers, puffy down coat, and miner’s hat, she looked like a kid playing war in the woods rather than the mother of two and stepmother of four.

  I looked at Mary Lou and then Briggs, who had returned the gun to his pocket. “Please. Someone. Anyone,” I said. “The suspense is killing me.”

  No one spoke for a minute, and then Christine explained. “Alison, this is Sissy, Sassy’s sister.”

  “Say that three times fast,” I said.

  “Briggs is my son,” Sissy/Mary Lou said.

  “Of course he is,” I said. It didn’t really matter. “Can I go?” I asked, knowing that I could return to Brianna MacGyver’s house, break up another party, and use the phone. “I honestly don’t care who anyone is or what they have to do with this. I’m just really, really tired.” Suddenly, exhaustion took complete hold of me and I sat down on the bridge. “What did you put in my tea, anyway?” I asked. “I’m exhausted but in a good way.”

  “Ativan,” Briggs said. “It’s an antianxiety drug.”

  “Ah, that explains it,” I said, curling up in a ball on the slats. “I should be more anxious given that you were going to kill me, but I couldn’t care less.” I got comfortable on the bridge. They could continue their conversation as long as they wanted; I was taking a nap.

  “You’ll have to come and get the money,” Christine said, knowing now that I didn’t care what the story was or what anyone had to do with anything. “I can’t lug these bags again. They’re too heavy.”

  “It’s all of it?” Briggs asked. “The whole two hundred and fifty thousand?”

  “All here,” she said.

  “Where did you get it?” he asked. “I thought it was with the government or something.”

  “I married well,” Christine said, and I could hear the smile in her voice.

  “You married a guy who could come up with that kind of money quickly?” Briggs asked.

  “I did,” Christine said. “Fortunately, he’s a really nice guy, too.” I could hear her moving on the bridge, her feet coming to rest beside my face. “He gave me the money to give you so that you would leave us alone,” she said.

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Old Tim didn’t have a job anymore.

  “Once the public administrator released it, we would have our money back,” she said.

  Made a certain amount of sense, but Briggs wasn’t buying it.

  “Chick stole that money. From my father. There’s no way the public administrator will ever give it back,” he said.

  Christine had an answer for that, too. “Whatever happens, we’re even. And I can rest easy, knowing that the money that you think my brother stole is now back with you. Where it belongs.” She took another step forward. “Go get the money. I kept up my end of the bargain, and now you have what you want.”

  Mary Lou was still weeping somewhere in the vicinity.

  “Why shouldn’t I just kill you?” he asked.

  “Because you got what you want. Killing me might make you feel good for a little while, but when all is said and done, it won’t bring your father back. Or your aunt.”

  Mary Lou let out a tortured sob. I thought back to our earlier conversation where she professed her love for her late husband. It had never occurred to me that she might be related to Sassy, but I would ask Christine about that later.

  I kept my eyes closed, drifting in and out of an Ativan haze. If this went on much longer, I would get a full night’s sleep. Finally.

  “Let us go,” Christine said quietly, leading me to believe that we were at some kind of standoff. I didn’t care; any energy I had had been used up grabbing Mary Lou and holding the stiletto to her neck. Now, I just wanted to go to sleep, letting the darkness envelop me in a sweet peace. “Take it. Go. I will never say another word.”

  “How do I know that?” Briggs asked.

  “Because it would tarnish everyone’s memory of my brother,” she said, “and I could never do that, even now that I know what he did.”

  I wanted to raise my head and ask, “What did he do?” but I was too tired.

  Footsteps marched past my head, dangerously close, and the bridge swayed gently with the moving feet. I heard the sound of a zipper being opened and the rustling of paper. “It better all be here,” Briggs said.

  “It’s all there,” Christine said, using her inside, calm-mommy voice. “All of it. Now go. Not another word. Live your life. It’s all in the past now.”

  “Mom, you take one bag,” Briggs said. “I’ll come back for the last one.” He went by me again, this time dragging one of the duffels. Mary Lou followed behind, her weeping still audible, dragging another one of the bags.

  When they reached the end of the bridge, their feet now making squishing sounds in the marshy muck of the preserve, the area was bathed in a harsh light and a voice, which in my befuddled state sounded suspiciously like Crawford’s but wasn’t, blared through some kind of PA system, the origins of which were a mystery to me. “Stop. Drop the bags. Police.”

  I sat up and rubbed my eyes, shielding them against the glare. “Nap over,” I said to a bewildered Christine. I couldn’t see what was going on, blinded by the light, but I could hear scuffling as the police swarmed the area, taking down Briggs and Mary Lou. “Who are these people and what’s their fascination with nature preserves?”

  Christine helped me get to my feet and I rocked
back on my heels, a little unsteady still, but managing to keep myself upright. “I’ll explain everything in the car,” she said. We walked off the bridge, finding Briggs and Mary Lou facedown in the muck, their hands cuffed behind their backs. Mary Lou was still wailing.

  “We just wanted what was ours,” she cried.

  Christine stopped and turned. I had never seen her so angry, her face so filled with rage. It came on in an instant, and she lashed into Mary Lou. “You could have gotten everything you wanted if you had just waited. I told you. I told your sister. I told your son. But you had to take matters into your own hands and drag Alison along for the ride. That wasn’t part of our deal. And now you’re really in a heap of trouble.” The police in the area stopped what they were doing and looked at her. “You lost your sister and I lost my brother in all of this mess. Isn’t that enough?”

  Two police officers—a duo in a sea of blue—pulled Briggs and Mary Lou to their feet, dragging them with no regard for their personal comfort to the waiting police cars. Christine and I followed after assuring one of the officers—a young woman who looked like she was fulfilling her life’s dream by being in the middle of this dragnet—that we were fine and didn’t require medical attention. Though who knew? I was still as high as a kite. I suspected my injuries, the ones I had sustained from falling in the woods, would make their presence known once I was first, sober and second, fully awake.

  Crawford was pulling into the parking lot as we emerged from the woods, pulling his Passat into an empty space on two wheels. He was breathless, red in the face, and completely flummoxed when he got out of the car, stuttering all sorts of accusations and recriminations to one of us, I wasn’t sure which.

  “I … I…” he started. “Her … You,” he said, pointing at Christine, “I expect more than … I expect more from you.”

  Where did that leave me?

  “I know,” she said. “I should have let you know, but I never thought Alison would be involved. They told me they wanted the money, so I contacted the police in Greenwich and they put me in touch with the FBI. They set the whole thing up.” She crossed her arms across her chest. “Then Briggs called me and told me he had an insurance policy. That’s when I knew this wouldn’t go according to plan.”

  “You’re not getting the money, are you?” I asked, suddenly feeling so sad that tears were forming in my half-shut eyes. It was the Ativan talking. “So Tim can’t open his sandwich shop?”

  Christine turned toward me. “What?”

  “The sandwich shop. Tim’s Fancy Sandwich Shoppe,” I said, giving a little wave as a flourish to emphasize just how fancy it would be. “That’s the name I came up with, anyway.”

  Crawford looked at Christine and she mouthed “Ativan.”

  “He doesn’t work at Westcore anymore,” I blurted out, much to everyone’s surprise.

  Christine’s mouth fell open. “What?” she repeated.

  Crawford looked at me. “Yes. What?”

  “I don’t think I should say anything else.” I closed my mouth. “Ask Tim,” I said to Christine after a brief pause.

  Crawford turned his attention back to the matter at hand. He looked back at his ex. “I expect these sorts of things from her, but you?”

  “Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” I asked, my senses not dulled enough to notice that he seemed to think I was a bad influence.

  He wrapped his arms around me. “Forget it. Tell me later. I am pretty sick of Turkey Mountain and driving all the way up here every few nights.”

  “It’s actually the town of Yorktown,” I said.

  “Whatever.” He looked at Christine again. “You sure you’re okay? Do you want someone to take you home?”

  She pointed toward the car that held Mary Lou and Briggs. “Now that they’re gone, I’m fine. I’m sure someone here will want to talk to me about this whole thing, and once that’s over, I think I’ll go home and collapse.”

  I leaned into Crawford, suddenly too tired to stand. “Was there really two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in those bags?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nope. Xeroxes of money. No actual money.”

  “So Tim didn’t pony up the cash?” I asked.

  “There are very few people who could get that kind of money in a short amount of time, Alison,” she said, the implication being that I didn’t know a lot about money. She was right; I didn’t. That was just fine with me.

  Something occurred to me. “Hey, how did you know we were here?” I asked.

  “Believe it or not,” Crawford said, “I got a call from Alex Most.”

  “I have no idea who that is.”

  “Alex Most? Meaghan’s boyfriend?”

  “That’s his name?”

  Crawford was starting to get impatient; nothing like trying to explain a simple story to a woman under the influence of a most excellent drug. “Yes. He was worried after he ran into you and Mrs. Bannerman—”

  “You mean Sissy.”

  “Okay, Sissy, and he called Meaghan. He said you didn’t look well. She called me after she called her mother, who obviously knew where you were headed.”

  “So Mr. Super Senior and Christine saved my bacon?”

  Crawford had had enough of my comedic stylings. He motioned to one of the cops standing on the perimeter. “We’re going to get going soon, so if you need something from her, get it now.”

  The cop raced over. Even in a situation like this, where he had absolutely no jurisdiction, Crawford took over, which explains why his retirement lasted all of two days. The cop asked me to come over to his car so he could get my statement, as incomprehensible as it would be, given my state of mind. I took a seat sideways, my feet still in the parking lot. What can I say? I don’t like being in the backseat of police cars.

  My statement was short: They picked me up. They took me here. Christine showed up. No, I’m not hurt. I want to go home.

  The cop, not as handsome or as friendly as the other Yorktown cop, Stearns, looked at me sadly. “We may need to get more from you tomorrow or the next day.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “I’m really tired.” The night suddenly felt chillier than it had, and I started to shiver. Coming down off an Ativan high after being hauled up north to a nature preserve was starting to take its toll. Crawford came over, stripped off his jacket, and wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  “I need a time machine,” I mumbled, half asleep.

  “What?”

  “A time machine. Let’s go back in time,” I said.

  He opened the door to his car and helped me get in, pulling the seat belt across and buckling me in, something he had been doing since we first met. “To when you didn’t have another wife and she didn’t have crazy brothers and—”

  “I don’t have another wife,” he said, putting his hand over the belt to make sure it was tight enough.

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Well, if I didn’t have another wife, I wouldn’t have the girls, and you know how I feel about them.” His face was inches from mine. “I couldn’t live without them,” he said softly.

  “I know,” I said, suddenly sad. It was the Ativan talking, but still, I was engulfed in a profound despair. “I think I want my own.”

  “Your own what?” he asked, even though I had a feeling that he knew what I meant. He wanted to hear me say it.

  I waved my hand around, at a loss for words. “You know. My own.”

  He smiled and pulled me close. “I know. I want more of my own, too.”

  “So you’re open to getting another dog?” I asked, not out of it enough not to ruin the moment with a bad joke.

  “You’d better be kidding,” he said into my hair.

  “I am,” I said.

  “Don’t change your mind.”

  “I won’t,” I said, feeling surer about that than about any other thing in my entire life.

  Forty-Three

  I didn’t know yo
u could have a hangover from antianxiety meds, but there you have it. Another lesson learned. I woke up on that Saturday morning with a pounding headache and only the briefest of recollections of what had happened the entire day before. Crawford was standing over the bed in his best black suit, the one he wears to weddings and funerals, and it occurred to me that we didn’t know anyone getting married but we did know someone who had died.

  “Marty’s funeral,” I said, my mouth coated in loose cotton, or so it felt. I turned over and pulled his pillow over my head.

  He pulled the pillow off of me. “I made coffee. Get up, because we have to drive up north and we don’t have a lot of time,” he said. “Tell me what you want to wear and I will get everything together while you shower.”

  He’s a good guy, that Crawford. I told him I wanted my black wrap dress, sheer hose, and any pair of black pumps he laid his hands on in the closet. There were a lot in there, and trying to describe exactly which ones I wanted would have taken far too long. I certainly didn’t want the ones that I had worn the night before, one of which I had held against Mary Lou’s throat with all intention of using it as a weapon, and hopefully, he would know that.

  While I showered, I tried to piece together what had happened. The door was open, so I called out to him as I soaped up. “Did I get kidnapped again or was that a bad dream?”

  “You got kidnapped again.” A drawer slammed. “What color pantyhose?”

  “Sheer!”

  “What do those look like?”

  “Find a pair that looks like your skin and pull them out.”

  “Gross,” he said. I didn’t know if he thought the stockings actually looked like skin or he was reacting to the state of my drawer. “You have a lot of athletic socks.” Clearly the latter.

  “And you have giant boxer shorts.” I poured some fragrant shampoo into my hair and lathered. “There’s no way to fold those things.”

  He made a sound of triumph. “Got them!”

  As I massaged my scalp, bits and pieces of the evening started coming back to me. “Did I tell you I wanted a baby last night?” I asked tentatively, not liking the long silence that came after my question. “Crawford?”